Suggestion: pkg-config supplies a pkg-config.pc file

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Daniel Macks 

| With the addition of the *.private fields, we now have .pc files that
| can be silently mis-parsed by older pkg-config programs. Is there a
| way for a .pc to specify "only compatible with certain pkg-config
| versions"?

No, unfortunately not.

| Problem: unless foo knows that libbar has a libbar.pc that uses these
| new fields, it might not use a new enough pkg-config version. Result:
| a deficient --libs output, potential compile failures, a confusing
| round of debugging, and mis-directed blame at foo's developers.

Indeed. This is problematic.

| One solution would be for pkg-config to supply a pkg-config.pc file,
| enabling every .pc to handle its own pkg-config version compatibility
| requirements. For example, libbar.pc would list:
|   Requires: pkg-config >= 0.18

This has been suggested a few times before for various reasons, I just
haven't gotten around to actually doing anything about it, though.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen                                                        ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are      : :' :
                                                                      `. `' 
                                                                        `-